diff --git a/finance/proposal-calls/cycle5/craig-photometry.md b/finance/proposal-calls/cycle5/craig-photometry.md new file mode 100644 index 00000000..83bbeafe --- /dev/null +++ b/finance/proposal-calls/cycle5/craig-photometry.md @@ -0,0 +1,57 @@ +### Accessible stellar photometry + +### Project Team +Matt Craig will lead the project. Additional participants are from two members of the Astronomy/STEM Alliance with Lick Observatory (ASTRAL), collaborators from others in the upper Midwest who work primarily with undergraduates, and members of the AAVSO. + +### Project Description / Scope of Work +This project will focus on a package called stellarphot, which is intended to be +an easy-to-use tool for performing aperture astronomy on a set of images. It is +written to be run either by a script or via a Jupyter notebook-based interface. + +This proposal will do three things: + +1. Work with users at primarily undergraduate institutions to improve the + usability and accessibility of the stellarphot package. +2. Develop a workshop and tutorials for the package. +3. Add two features to improve performance of the package: i) calibration using + an ubercal-style approach that minimizes changes in magnitude across several + images over many nights and ii) add the ability to work with and save postage + stamps of images rather than full images. + +#### Roadmap Items +These roadmap items will be addressed: + ++ "🟥 Expand and build on workshop offerings, including online and increased + geographic coverage" will be addressed by developing a workshop targeted to + smaller observatories/institutions that do stellar photomtery and integrating + techniques for processing images from smart telescope developed by the AAVSO. ++ "🔶 Develop, host, and index tutorials suitable for use in university + astronomy courses" will be addressed by creating shorter notebooks in additon + to the workshop materials and embedding video help into the notebooks that the + package provides. ++ "🟥 Improve support for using Astropy tools in heterogeneous computing + environments such as cloud environments or GPU systems" will be addressed by + ensuring that it is Array API compliant and by building out the option in + `ccdproc` and `stellarphot` to convert full frame images into postage stamp + cutouts around stars instead of keeping full images. + +#### Project / Work / Deliverables + +1. More extensive documentation and tutorials. +2. WOrkshop materials. +3. Improvement of the calibration and postage stamp features. + +### Approximate Budget +Currency: US $4,500 - $9,000 + + +- Salary + - Project lead: $0 - $1,000 + - Additional team members who will help with software development and testing: $4,500 - $8,000 +- TOTAL: $4,500 - $9,000 + +*Note*: if funded at the lower end of the range the funding will be directed to the additional team members rather than the project lead. + +### Period of Performance + +The period of performance is Jan 1, 2026–Dec 31, 2026.